


A Dance Called Confusion

by jazzfic



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, Tumblr: promptsinpanem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2014-03-24
Packaged: 2018-01-16 20:42:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1361080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzfic/pseuds/jazzfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I’m not naive. Pure is the green of a spring bud growing from a frost-chilled branch. Neither have and will never be words to describe me. I have to learn a new vocabulary; and I have to accept that those shifts inside me are making permanent the things I had always been so eager to go without.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dance Called Confusion

Too much. His hand, resting against the table’s edge while the other grips a knife handle. The tension in the sure lines of his arm as he cuts a loaf for grilling – it’s too much. It mesmerises me, and though I try to resist, I fail miserably. And why? Because he’s no deer hidden in forest shadows, and because I’m standing in a warm kitchen, instead of on leaves or grass. Instead of a place where I know my footing. 

Here, I’m lost. I don’t know which step to take. 

He’ll look up soon. Smile as if he’s caught me in the throes of inaction. But not seeing (I hope, oh I really hope) the real reason for my staring. 

I sigh. I can’t kid myself. Of course he knows. And of course he’ll say nothing; he’ll put not the slightest pressure on me. We’ve been close to that situation many times in the few months since he came back to Twelve, times when I’ve near exploded in anger, from frayed nerves and the broiling heat of frustration that I’ve then turned in the one swift motion to take out on him. Seeing as he’s the only real target I have.

Things change so quickly. My feelings have shifted current so many times that I’ve lost count. This morning they were absent, but when he came walking through the snow to share a breakfast with my silence, they flared again. Now it feels like they swirl without my doing across hot stones. It doesn’t matter. Whatever label I can put on the thing that keeps me standing here watching, it doesn’t matter. I’ll hold fast to it until I blink, and it’s all new again.

My stomach growls. It better be a damn good lunch that he’s making, for all the suffering I’m putting myself through here in my over-cooked angst. The twitch of his jaw as he purposely avoids my gaze tells me he’s quite aware of where I am right now in my head, and part of me feels relief at this. But another part picks and pulls at the old resentment I know so well, turning it back in my face for falling so easily. 

I don’t want to be that person. I don’t! He just makes things so... so – 

Difficult. That’s the word.

Is it?

I’m not naive. _Pure_ is the green of a spring bud growing from a frost-chilled branch. Neither have and will never be words to describe me. I have to learn a new vocabulary; and I have to accept that those shifts inside me are making permanent the things I had always been so eager to go without. 

“Difficult?” I mutter, beneath my breath. “More like complicated.” 

Peeta looks up. “What’s that?”

Forcing out words that are unnecessary and just plain awkward makes my voice sound like gravel, but I do it anyway. 

“Nothing. Um, do you want some help?”

He’s pretty much made it through the whole loaf during my small internal battle, and his smile makes clear how closely he’s been paying attention to me. Peeta gives a shrug and puts down the knife. “You could grate some of that,” he says, pointing to the ceramic square sitting on a matching plate on the table. I walk over and lift it up. The block of cheese is crumbling at the edges, and I have to hold it with care against the metallic instrument so it doesn’t fall apart in my hand.

I eye the bread as he lays out the slices and reaches into the chiller for the butter. “Are we going to eat all that? Seems a lot for just the two of us.”

He winks at me, and pats at the soft expanse of cotton covering his chest. “We’re young, Katniss. We can handle it. Besides, this loaf was getting stale.” His teasing expression drops and he frowns at the table. “Now, I know I had some garlic here somewhere...”

There it is again. That feeling. This time it’s a sudden buzz I feel it turning through my center. I know what has caused it and I grow warm with embarrassment. It was the thump of solid upon solid, his _hand_ , that jokey, innocent touching he did to himself just now, the fact that I now can’t stop staring at his chest and the angles his body makes as he bends over the table looking for a garlic bulb. It’s ridiculous. I’m stuck and captured like some dumb animal, and maybe Peeta knows this, yes, or maybe he’s as dumb as I am – but all I can think is how he’s _there_ and _solid_ , and rooted into places inside of me, whether he wants it or not. And unless I find a way to snap myself out of this hot mess, I’ll – 

“Ugh, stop it,” I whisper.

I can’t. There’s his blond head, tilted to one side; his eyes searching the table... no, under the table. His hand flexed again, like before, right on the edge. And his voice... “That’s so weird, I swear I got it out from there, and put it down here.”

“Peeta.”

I don’t see what my body is doing until I’m there, next to him. I press my hip against his. He straightens, blinking. 

That face. So disarmingly attractive it hurts. But in the way I want and need something to hurt. I’m almost certain I could look at it all day.

His eyes flutter with confusion and he steps back. So I step forward. It’s a short little dance that we do, and when it ends I find I’m situated between Peeta and the table, left with room only to breathe. We’re so close. My feet fit between his. Our eyes meet at a level; we’re the same height, there’s no up or down in which to hide. 

I realize he’s waiting. Another day I might be stubborn and force the first move out of him. Here, I don’t. Something else is pushing its way out. Is it need, affection? Boundaries slipping? The last I am sure of, though what it means beyond a few words just confuses me. It’s all abstract, anyway. I rely on action, even if it’s to merely speak when I’m elsewhere frozen. So I say his name again, and my heartbeat is pounding like a hollow thing, though it fills my ears, spurring me on. It’s taking an effort to become unstuck. I wonder if he feels it where we’re pressed gently together, our upper bodies swaying with the shallow, shallow breaths.

I wonder if he wants to kiss me. 

Usually I don’t think this far ahead. I don’t understand how terrible and thrilling anticipation can be in these moments, but we seem to be having them more and more. Before, I was usually the one making the first move, stopping his words, planting my awkward inexperience before a camera and probably bruising him in the process. 

Now, I don’t know. We seem to have become masters of avoidance, shy all over again now we’re really alone. He thinks I’ll bolt, and sometimes I do. But sometimes I want him to move with me, to match my speed. 

I guess we’re still a team, in our own way, together.

My hands shake. I bring them up to capture his jaw, meaning to hold him there so he knows I’m okay. I think I had half talked myself out of anything more, but Peeta seems to jolt awake in that second, and it’s his hands that press to me instead, his fingers curling past my cheeks and my ears and into my hair, to settle there unsettled as our lips brush lightly. This is not a kiss, though. It’s purposely not a kiss. It’s a flat out tease. 

“Katniss,” he says. The letters sound thick on his tongue, like he’s chewing up my name. He exhales slowly, leans forward – 

His lips, again. Still not a kiss. Damn him, damn him, _damn him._

“Yes, Peeta?” I say.

Now his mouth slants gently into mine, so soft that I want to give him some sort of medal for self-control, because goodness knows I’m about to lose my own. He speaks between each breath. “Do you...” His hands drift over my shoulders, down to the unbuttoned top of my shirt. “Do you want...” His left hand flicks the next button down, brushing against my breast, while his right continues to my middle. We press against each other, our foreheads damp. 

Suddenly Peeta angles his face away, forcing me to look him in the eye. When I lean back to do so our hips connect fully and the quick, burning throb of it makes my throat constrict, and the breath rush from me in a gasp. 

He smiles. “Do you want... cracked pepper or herbs on your grilled cheese?”

I gape at him. Wired tight and humming inside, I gape at him, and I cry, “Peeta Mellark!” while my hands thud squarely at his chest. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! But your face, Katniss,” he says. “I can’t help it. You’re so easy.”

He keeps smiling until the same laughter rises in me. It’s a strange sound, so strange, as if I don’t know myself. I sigh as he wraps me against him, the too solid thing that I need, and we kiss, properly, until all other sound disappears.


End file.
